Look, mom, there's a man behind the curtain.... and he's doing something nasty!

I notice that I only get the Blackboard blues when I actually try to do something with the program.

Funny how that goes.

Today's challenge: Create a unit which has a page that only becomes available at the end of the week in the curriculum.

I figured that I would create a hidden page, which would be scheduled to be visible at the appropriate time. I would put that page at the beginning of the unit, so at the certain time students could be sent to the learning unit again and, tada, there is the summary page.

Unfortunately, I forgot the first principal of the Blackboard Learning System: Blackboard sucks.

Intead of hiding the page I made unavailable, I get this:



So much for hiding material but keep it in the flow.

I suppose that when the Blackboard programmers buy Christmas gifts for their kids, rather than hiding them in some secret closet, they leave them out in the living room marked "Don't think about until Dec. 25"

Feh. Wankers all.

Nobody said programming was going to be easy

But the inability of Blackboard to support any sort of customization out of the box is mindboggling.

Apparently, if you didn't see it customized in the demo, it can't be customized at all.

Today's two examples come from the fun world of "assessments".

Do I really need a javascript reminder before every quiz? Even if there's no point value to it?

Why must the point value display for every quiz?

Why can't I modify the assessment.css file directly on a hosted installation?

How come there's no option between display all the questions and display each question on its own page -- say, how about a set of nested pages, all combining for one timer?

Remember: The programmers working on buzzword compliance weren't working on developing a better learning environment!

Zipping past LRN

So, it turns out that the "upload LRN" option works quite fine with zipped-up directories. Wrap up the images, the javascript, the html -- and Blackboard can display a web site for you! Wow!

Of course, this might be in the manual. But then, why say "LRN" if you can handle a zip file? And why hide things in manuals if the system is so damn user-friendly that you keep tripping on all the child-proof safety foam?

Another reminder of why I hate MS

While poring over the Microsoft site trying to find a download of the seemingly no-longer-available LRN program, I ran across this:

Unable to verify the identity of www.microsoftelearning.com as a trusted site.

Possible reasons for this error:

- Your browser does not recognize the Certificate Authority that issued the site's certificate.
- The site's certificate is incomplete due to a server misconfiguration.
- You are connected to a site pretending to be www.microsoftelearning.com, possibly to obtain your confidential information.

Please notify the site's webmaster about this problem.Before accepting this certificate, you should examine this site's certificate carefully. Are you willing to to accept this certificate for the purpose of identifying the web site www.microsoftelearning.com?

Remind me again why open source isn't serious?

When will they ever LRN?

So, it seems that in version 6, non-enterprise mode, we can upload LRN modules.

LRN modules seem to be like SCORM, only less so (imagine!) and compiled by a proprietary Microsoft download. Said download promises to handle all the difficult content conversion, and guarantee IE-only access.

However: I still haven't found the promised LRN 3.0 download.

A search on the microsoft site doesn't help.

Any clues?

Wherefore and Why

So, after years of custom learning systems, I've been drafted into the world of Blackboard.

I'm not happy about it.

Buzzword compliance is not what it's made out to be.

Herewith, a diary of my hurdles... and hopefully my successes.